Turn-About is Fair Pay: Forrester Gives 4 Reasons Enterprise IT Should Support iPhone
Fortune has covered Forrester Research’s latest report “Making iPhone Work In The Enterprise: Early Lessons Learned”. Whiplash-much? After all, it does come on the heels of previous reports including “The iPhone Is Not Meant For Enterprises”, “The Top 10 Reasons Why We Recommend That IT Not Support It”, and “Harold and Kumar Don’t Want an iPhone at White Castle”. Okay, we made that last one up. Barely.
This time the people who were crafting link-bait before there were any links to bait have seemingly decided the best bang for their buck is to pull a 180 and, instead of trouncing the iPhone in enterprise, actually support it. Sure, Apple’s increasing development of the OS, including iPhone 2.x and the upcoming iPhone 3.0 could have something to do with it, but even in IT it’s generally more about the artist than the tools. So to speak.
What does Forrester claim makes the iPhone so suddenly worthy?
- Employees like them. “In this era of Technology Populism, where consumer IT is often better than enterprise IT, it sometimes just makes sense to give employees the freedom to choose the tools they want.”
- They make mobile collaboration easier. “As anybody with experience on both iPhones and BlackBerry will tell you, the Internet feels natural on an iPhone and a like a chore on a BlackBerry.”
- iPhone users need less hand-holding. “All three firms have set up wikis so that employees can support each other. ‘Our early adopters sometimes teach things we’d rather our iPhone users not know, but overall they provide better support than we can,’ said one person we interviewed.”
- They can be cheaper in the long run. “In at least one case, an iPhone adopter found that the data plans for previous mobile devices were more expensive than the consumer plans AT&T is offering for iPhones. This company was able to reset its baseline plan pricing 30% lower for all phones because it supported iPhone.”
For an actual iPhone endorsement, some remaining corporate gotchas, and 3.0 redemptioms, check out Fortune’s coverage or throw $749 at Forrester (if you didn’t just blow that cash on an unlocked iPhone…)
[Thanks to The Reptile for the tip!]
April 14th, 2009 at 8:06 am
As the IT Manager for a company of 25 employees, I can say unequivocally that the iPhone has been the easiest and most enjoyable smartphone to support on our corporate infrastructure. I have had to provide support for WinMo, Palm, and Blackberry devices as well. All proved to be difficult to set up in one fashion or another.
It is true that with Blackberries, and to a lesser extent Palm devices, that browsing the web is much more of a chore. In fact, even with the iPhone’s current shortcomings, I can’t think of a single task that seems like a chore on the phone. What it can’t do, it can’t do. But, what it can do, it does much better than any of the others.
It takes less than two minutes for me to set someone up on our Exchange type mail system. Also, I only have to give a few minutes of instructions and users are already figuring out how to do things on their own. With the other devices, I am still having to help people even a full year after they started using them.
April 14th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Sounds like a lot of love for the iphone browser which is understandable. That distinction won’t be there for much longer though with the Pre which will feature a real kb along with a better web browser.
April 14th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
I really don’t see why any enterprise would not want to allow iPhones. Any person I’ve handed my iPhone too has been able to figure it out quickly and easily; always saying wow that makes sense! Put a BB or WinMo phone in someone’s hands and if they have never used it before it can be daunting to learn the in’s and out’s of the device in a reasonable amount of time to be productive right out of the gate.
With MS ActiveSync and all that setting them up should be a breeze for any computer running in an MS enviornment. If it only took me 5 minutes to get Google Sync running via exchange any IT person can do it in probably 5 seconds with a company exchange server.
You also don’t have to rely on third parties to get important data too employees; ie BES.
April 14th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Enterprises that are resisting the iPhone are not doing so because of the capabilities of the iPhone for users, or for even helpdesk/supporting users, but for managing the devices after they are out there.
Some enterprises need the ability to remote lock or remote wipe devices. Others need to bulk deploy custom applications easily, either company wide or to specific profiles or groups within the company. A few more need security auditing running constantly (hello, background processes). And some just flat-out hate having iTunes on their network.
WinPhos, and Treos, and especially Blackberries, whatever their flaws as phones, have those management issues licked. Apple has chosen not to focus on them to date. For each one of the above Apple addresses, they will pick up another chunk of those enterprise customers. It is just a question of when (if?) Apple decides it is worth it to address each one.
April 14th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
@fassy: Let me point out that iPhone supports remote wiping with firmware 2.x.x. However, Apple needs a business-oriented iPhone management app, not iTunes.
April 15th, 2009 at 9:37 am
BUT, there is no internal encryption within the iPhone. BBs and WM devices have had it for years. Isn’t that somewhat of a requirement for enterprise?
My $0.02…